The Flying Sorcerers

by David Gerrold

  The spell of the open mind had failed. I remembered nothing. I opened my mouth to speak, but Shoogar stopped me. “You did fine, Lant. Just fine.”

  I wondered what he was talking about, but he was once more fussing with his equipment. His manner was confident, almost cheerful. He found what he was looking for, a piece of chalk, and proceeded to draw a rune about the square pattern of bumps beside the door. Only once did he speak to me, “You told me almost all of what I need to know, Lant. Almost all. The rest I can fathom for myself.”

  I shrugged and sat down to watch. Obviously he knew what he was doing.

  He sat cross-legged before the door and began chanting, working himself into a trance. He sat motionless on that patch of ground before the door, the only sounds his thin reedy voice and the gushing of the spring.

  The suns crept up the sky, Ouells glowing like a blue-white diamond at Virn’s fading edge. So much to do, so little time! How long would Purple be gone? Could we complete the spell in time?

  Shoogar sat silent and unmoving. His eyes were glazed. Occasionally he would give a little grunt; but he said nothing. I began to perspire.

  Could Purple throw red fire at a man?

  At last, when I had begun to fear that Shoogar would never speak again, he rose, stepped to that pattern of bumps, and touched four of them in a particular pattern.

  Nothing happened.

  Shoogar repeated the touch.

  Still nothing happened.

  Shoogar shrugged and returned to his place. Again he went into his trance. This time, after an even greater wait, he approached that door even more cautiously. Once more he tapped out a pattern on the nestwall bumps; the same four, but a different order.

  Nothing happened again.

  Shoogar sighed and returned to his squatting position. I began to fear that we might spend the whole day just gaining entry to Purple’s nest and have no time left for the cursing. Indeed, I had almost given up all hope of ever completing the task before us when Shoogar rose again. He approached the nest slowly, looked at the bumps for a long time, then touched four of them in a carefully precise manner.

  And the door to the nest slid open.

  Shoogar allowed himself a smile, but only a small one. It was a smile of anticipation: there was still much to do.

  Quickly, we gathered up the equipment and moved into Purple’s nest.

  The walls themselves glowed with Purple s odd-colored light — bright and yellow, it made my eyes see colors that were not there. Slowly, as my vision sorted itself out, I began to see that this nest was furnished like no other nest I had ever seen. All around were tiny glowing eyes, raised knobs and more bumps like those in the pattern outside the door.

  In the center was a zigzagged piece of padded furniture, a fit couch for a demon. Set into the nestwall just ahead of this were a series of flat plates like windows, but infinitely more transparent — like hardened air! Indeed, the whole nest showed workmanship finer than I had ever seen.

  Shoogar peered carefully at the flat plates like windows. Some showed images of the areas around the nest Others held odd patterns in colored light, carefully drawn lines and curves — obviously the demon’s runes. Shoogar indicated one of these. “Do you still think he does not use magic? he asked me; then, remembering his own injunction against unnecessary chatter, silenced himself.

  Apparently it was not a very strong injunction, for Shoogar had been muttering back and forth all morning. Perhaps he had only warned me against speaking because he feared I would distract him. Well, he need not have worried; I had too much respect for Shoogar’s abilities to question him in the middle of a spell. I opened my mouth to tell him so, but he cut me off.

  Next to the padded thing was a plant, a vegetable well suited for the interior of this nest. It too was of a type I had never seen before. It was the shape of a white rose, but its color — could such a color be green? The leaves glowed like an hallucination. Green is a dull color, almost black; but here it seemed to glow as bright as any shade of red or blue. I touched the plant, expecting it to be as delicate as any I was familiar with; but here too, I received a shock: the leaves were as stiff and hard as an uncured hide. What a strange world Purple must come from! I thought — then realized that I was giving the mad magician too much credence. This must be a plant that would ordinarily be familiar to me. Purple had only cursed it.

  I turned my attention away, began looking for a door leading to the area above. But there was none. Apparently the nest included only this one compartment. The rest of its huge interior must be all spell devices. Shoogar had been right all along.

  But how small the nest was, if this was all there was to it! Barely room for two to stand!

  Shoogar had spread his travel kit and his equipment on the floor and was methodically organizing the materials he would use first. It was as if he cursed flying nests every day. He paused, put a finger into the stubble on his chin and scratched. He began to examine a piece of parchment which he took from his robe, a checklist, “Yes…” he decided after a brief pause. He pulled out the metal knife that I had seen before. “We will begin with the defiling of the metal.”

  He spat on the knife, then began to carve runes into the surface of the floor. Or tried to. The knife would not penetrate. Frowning, Shoogar pressed harder. The tip of the knife broke. Then the blade snapped in half.

  Shoogar returned the pieces of the knife to his travel kit without comment and looked at his checklist again. This time he pulled out a pouch of reddish powder, the dust of rust. He emptied a bit of it into his hands and blew. A smoky red cloud filled the room. I coughed and he threw me an angry glance. .

  A whirring sound started somewhere. Then a wind blew through the nest, plucking at my hair and clothing. I looked around in fear — could Purple have trapped the wind god? Even as I looked for traces of such a thing, the reddish dust in the air thinned. Shortly the wind stopped, and the dust was gone with it. There was not even a fine red layer on any of the polished surfaced. Odd.

  Still Shoogar was undismayed. He consulted his list again.

  Abruptly, he produced a ball of fire from under his robe. Then another and another, throwing them as fast as they came, at the walls, the ceiling, the floor. Where they struck they stuck, sending up acrid sparks and oily smoke.

  There was a hissing sound — and jets of water spat from apertures in the ceiling. They aimed themselves straight at the fireballs, drenched them to ash in seconds. And then, as Shoogar produced a last fireball from under his robe, they all turned on Shoogar.

  When the water went off, Shoogar turned his hand over, and allowed the drenched fireball to drop stickily to the floor. Dripping, he held up his sodden checklist and consulted it again. Water dripped from it onto the floor, then drained away into places we knew not.

  I felt my hopes draining away with the water. Shoogar had begun three separate attempts — and all of them had failed. The stranger’s magic was much too strong. We were doomed even before we had begun.

  “Ah, yes —” said Shoogar. “It goes well.”

  I doubted my ears. I dared a question, “it goes what?”

  “Obviously, Lant, you have not been paying attention. This nest is equipped with very efficient protective spells. I had to find out what they were, so that I could nullify them. Now, let us curse.”

  Shoogar began by inscribing runes on all the surfaces of the nest, floors, walls, ceiling, the back of the oddly shaped couch, the panels of knobs, everything. He called upon Fine-line, the god of engineers and architects, to blast this nest with a spell of deformity to make it crack and shatter.

  Onto each of the sacred signs, inscribed with chalk instead of knife, he dripped evil-smelling potions. As they combined, they began to smoke and sputter. “Waters of fire, burn and boil,” Shoogar urged them. We watched as the fluid ate holes into the runes and the surface below.

  Beautiful. Blasphemy is the heart of a good curse.

  Next he began to fill the ship with dust.
Apparently he wanted to overload the spell of the protective wind, for he blew great clouds of the red dust of rust. The whirring started up immediately, but Shoogar kept blowing.

  “Well, don’t just stand there, you goat — help me!”

  I grabbed handfuls of the red powder and blew — somehow we were able to keep great swirling clouds of rust swirling and churning throughout the compartment. The dust of rust is a symbol of time, sacred to several gods at once: Brad of the past, Kronk of the future, and Po who causes the decay of all things.

  When we had run out of the dust of rust, Shoogar continued with a fine white powder. It looked like the grindings of bone. “Aim for those wind pockets,” said Shoogar, pointing at a square, screened-over opening.

  Eyes streaming, coughing vigorously, I did so. Once Shoogar hurled a fireball at the screen. Some of the grindings gathered around the water droplets.

  Presently the whirring became uneven, threatened to stop.

  “Cover your nose and mouth, Lant. I do not want you to breathe any of this.” He pulled out a fat leather pouch. I put a cloth across the lower half of my face and watched as he produced a thick double handful of powdered magician’s hair.

  With a care borne of great sacrifice he aimed cautiously and blew a great sneeze of it toward the wind pockets. Within a moment, it was gone.

  The whirring sound labored, the wind seemed to be dying. And suddenly, both stopped.

  “Good, Lant! Now get the pots.” Shoogar was beaming with triumph. I pulled my kit from its place by the wall and produced a collection of six pottery containers, each with a close-fitting lid.

  “Good,” said Shoogar again. He began placing them carefully around the interior of Purple’s nest. Into each he put a sputtering ball of fire, then closed the lid on it.

  There were tiny holes in the lid of each pot, to allow the fire-god to breathe, but too tiny to allow entrance of the water. The liquid jets arced out, but unable to reach the flames directly, they continued playing over the pots and over everything else.

  Shoogar watched to see where the water was draining, began pouring defiled water and other viscous syrups into the drain holes. Once he paused to add a generous handful of the white dust bone-grindings. As it swirled down into the drain, the mixture began to thicken ominously.

  Shortly, it seemed as if the drains were not working as efficiently. Pools were gathering on the floor. The odious smell of defiled water was strong in the hot, steamy smoky air. I thought I would retch. But no matter, the defiled water would certainly anger Filfo-mar, the river god.

  By now, Filfo-mar and N’veen, the god of the tides, would be engaged in their ancient tug of war. Only this time they would be tugging not at the waters of the world, but at opposite sides of the black nest. The more water that poured into the cabin, the stronger grew their powers — and the more vicious their battle.

  By the time the water jets stopped hissing, we were several inches deep in water and Shoogar and I were both dripping wet. But not chilly. The nest was steaming hot and growing hotter. Shoogar shucked off his robe and I followed suit.

  My eyes were watering, and I was still coughing up the dust from my lungs. When I pointed this out to Shoogar he only said, “Stop complaining. Nobody ever said a curse was easy. There’s more to come yet.”

  Indeed, we had only begun.

  Now Shoogar turned his attention to the various panels and plates that lined the interior. There were a great many knobs and bumps. Many of these came in sets of eight, each labeled with a different symbol. One we recognized: a triangle, the symbol of Eccar the Man.

  Could it be that some of Purple’s spells were based on the symbol of Eccar? If that were so, could Shoogar use that fact as a wedge, his lever with which to unbalance the rest of the spells of Purple’s nest?

  Shoogar pursed his lips thoughtfully, scratched at his stubbly chin. “Push the bumps, Lant. Wherever you see the symbol of the triangle, push the bumps — we will activate all of Purple’s Eccar spells and dissipate their power.”

  We moved through that compartment, looking high and low for the knobs and bumps. The knobs could all be twisted so that the triangle would appear at the top, and the bumps could all be depressed. There were blank knobs also; with a little experimentation Shoogar found that these could be turned in such a way that tiny slivers of metal behind layers of glass would move and point to triangles etched there.

  Strange things happened, but Shoogar cautioned me to ignore them. Once, one of the flat mirror-like plates glowed with an unearthly light and images appeared on it — images of the village, images of people we knew, Hinc and Ang and Pilg. I stared in fascinated horror — and then abruptly, Shoogar nullified the spell by painting over it with a thick gray potion that obscured the plate entirely.

  “I told you not to look,” he reproved me.

  We continued. Eventually we had turned every device in that nest to the symbol of the triangle, the symbol of three.

  We began the next phase of the curse.

  The fire pots had begun to cool, so Shoogar replenished them. Already the metal where they sat was too hot to touch, and portions of other devices had begun to crack.

  Now Shoogar began painting his thick gray paint over everything. First he nullified the image windows. Then he painted all the dials over, and all of the bumps too. Only the gods would know what symbols had been activated. In almost no time the interior of that nest was entirely gray. Klarther, the god of the skies and seas, would be furious. Fol, the god of distortion, would be chortling. Thus had Shoogar brought them to battle with each other, with the black nest between.

  Shoogar began to sketch new runes into the painted surfaces, oblivious of their relation to the runes beneath. Where the upper and under surfaces conflicted, the gods would engage in random battle. Always when he could, Shoogar worked the name of Elcin, the thunder god, into the runes.

  Into a crevice between two of the surfaces of knobs and bumps Shoogar pushed the narrow point of a sword-wand and called on Pull’nissin, the god of duels. Calling on Hitch, the god of birds, he broke eggs into three apertures. They sizzled angrily where they slid down; for Shoogar was using the egg-shaped image of the nest against itself. He continued chanting, calling on Musk-Watz and Blok, the god of violence; and at one point he even cast a rune defiling Tis’turzhin, the god of love, for love turned to hate can be the mightiest force of all.

  Shoogar consulted his checklist again, and produced a container of dormant sting things, and another of fungusoids. and leeches. He brought forth things with barbs and things with claws, and began scattering them about. Torpid though they were, some tried to attack us; but we were careful to place them where they were not immediately dangerous. And we had had the forethought to wear our thickest boots and gloves; the fanged creatures could not cut through.

  As he called on Sp’nee, ruler of slime, Shoogar spread great viscous gobs of goo into cracks and crannies between the boards of knobs and bumps. The air was already unbreathable with heat and wet, but the boards were far hotter. In some places Shoogar’s gray ointment had blackened and cracked, and the surface beneath glowed red with such heat and strench that one could not bear to approach too near. Eggs sizzled and smoked in places we could not see.

  And always Shoogar continued to call upon Elcin. The God of Thunder. The God of Fear.

  “Elcin, oh, Elcin! Come down, Oh Great and Tiny God of Lightning and Loud Noises! Come down from your mountain, oh Elcin! Come down from your mountain and strike down this infidel who dares to profane the sacred name of your magic!”

  Shoogar stood atop the demon couch and stretched his arms toward the sky. Triumph was spread across his face as he chanted the final canteles of the spell. The next was hung with webs of pain and painted with runes of despair.

  The swimming heated compartment crawled with fuzz balls and stingers, crabs and krakens and leeches. Somewhere something was burning, and oily smoke seeped up the walls. I choked on the rotting air and blinked the tear
s from my eyes.

  It was a masterpiece.

  I followed Shoogar out of the nest. The dry grass crunched underfoot as I dropped to the ground. We had spent a lifetime in that Shoogar-generated hell.

  I was amazed to find that it was still day. The double sunlight washed the world with a reassuring familiarity. Trees and plants and grass looked black to me; and I wondered if my eyes had seen too long by the light of Purple’s nest.

  My head swam in the cool clean air. Waves of dizziness swept over me. Even so, it was I who had to help Shoogar to walk. I had only observed the curse. Shoogar had executed it, and it had taken its toll of his strength. We moved unevenly down the slope. Our shadows wavered before us, tinged with red and blue edges. As the curse had ended, so had the conjunction. Once more the suns were separate.

  It seemed a miracle that Purple had not interrupted us, but it was still only mid-afternoon. We had finished with time to spare.

  We collapsed behind a clump of bushes. The unfouled air was like strong Quaff, and I was drunk on it. We lay there under the familiar black leaves, taking deep heaving breaths.

  After a while I rolled over on my side, looked at Shoogar, and asked, “When does it begin?”

  He didn’t answer, and for a moment I thought he had fallen asleep. It would not have surprised me. The exertions of the past days had left him pale and haggard. His eyes were red when he opened them, and rimmed with deep circles. He sighed slowly, “I don’t know, Lant, I don’t know … Perhaps I forgot something.”

  I sat up and looked uneasily at the black nest. It waited there in a hollow between two hills, its door invitingly open, Its door-!!

  “Shoogar!” I cried. The door! We left it open!”

  He sat up suddenly, stared horrified across the hill.

  “Can we close it?” I asked.

  “It must need another spell for that,” said Shoogar. “And we don’t have it.”

  “Couldn’t you —”

  “Couldn’t I what?” he demanded. “Make up a door-closing spell? Not for that nest, I couldn’t. I’d have to know what activates the door-opening spell first.”